Creating a better retirement landscape.

Retirement income is an epidemic, and it continues to go untreated. As the generations following the baby boomers approach retirement, there is a down trend in retirement financial readiness, and retirement financial awareness.

Just a few examples of what future generations will face when considering retirement include:

Defined Benefit plans are disappearing

Defined Contribution plans currently don’t offer much in the way of support preserving assets throughout retirement

The average Canadian lives 25 years longer than 100 years ago

Annuities can be purchased but require:

Timing – annuitant is better off in high interest rate market

Lump-sum of cash – need to have a large amount of cash available to make an annuity purchase

Will government subsidized programs like CPP and OAS be around in 10, 20, 30 years from now?

These concerns paint a picture in which Canadians may be missing a robust product that provides guaranteed income in their golden years but doesn’t come down to an all-or-nothing purchase.

There appears to be a need for a micro-annuity product, giving all Canadians the opportunity to secure more guaranteed income in retirement. This product could be $100 - $500, and have similar guarantees as a $50,000 annuity, and multiple micro-annuities could be purchased over an individual’s career?

In this two-day sprint (Taster) at Cookhouse Lab (Toronto), we will run through a series of design thinking exercises to identify if there is a need and market for a micro-annuity product, what technologies can be leveraged to minimize manual processes and purchasing latencies, what are the legal considerations, and ultimately, who/what is responsible for facilitating the sale of a micro-annuity.

This is a taster session at the Cookhouse Lab – there is no cost associated with this project.

Organizations may send one participanteach. Numbers are limited to 15. RSVP soon to secure your place!

This project is now full and is no longer accepting applications.

This innovation project will begin with a Lean Startup exercise, followed by the phases of Design Thinking as supported by a variety tools. The ultimate goal is to develop a high-level set of business processes and use cases.